In cold weather climes, the accumulation of snow and/or ice on the exterior of vehicles can be problematic in many different contexts. Unchecked, such accumulation can slow or even bring to a halt transportation of people and cargo, perhaps at its worst costing lives and/or the loss of significant sums of money.
Indeed, vehicles are often designed with aerodynamic and safety engineering considerations in mind. Companies and their engineers spend significant resources on the aerodynamic and safety design of, by way of example, automobiles and aircraft. Even the smallest amount of snow or ice buildup on the exteriors of such transport vehicles can negatively impact such aerodynamic and safety designs and decrease operability.
Currently the airline industry spends millions of dollars on de-icing compounds to de-ice aircraft before take-off. Application of such needs to be closely monitored and, in case of delays, even reapplied.
Automobile owners, having no such system, are often forced to manually remove snow and ice from their automobile exteriors. Needless to say, such removal is not easy or comfortable. Due to changes in the laws of many cold weather clime States, such snow/ice removal is now mandatory. Drivers who fail to remove snow/ice may be cited/ticketed for failing to remove such snow/ice for creating unsafe driving conditions.
While many vehicles are equipped with automatic snow/ice removal systems for their windows, no such apparatus or methodology currently exists for the vehicle exteriors. Thus as can be seen, there is a need which as heretofore not been met or resolved.